coming up at the place where the u.s. sends those they call triable guantanamo bag it's also the place where a massive hunger strike is underway and now we learn the u.s. military wants millions to operate get a look at the costs ahead. and people for the ethical treatment of animals is an organization devoted to protecting our furry friends but a report out of virginia says last year the group put down sixteen hundred cats and dogs at their shelter was complete about this practice coming up. and it's thursday so that means it's time to talk tax did you know twitter turned seven today and they have obtained. what does this mean for those of us that tweet will find out later in the show.

it's thursday march twenty first four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our team begin today with guantanamo bag as a hunger strike there continues a general is now telling us that the base needs one hundred seventy million dollars for repairs general john kelly the top commander of the u.s. southern command says the base is in dire need of upgrades he says the barracks and dining hall are deteriorating there general kelly says these repairs are critical for u.s. troops stationed in guantanamo but he says conditions detainees are living in are just find this out their prisoners are still on a hunger strike after forty four days they say it's to protest the conditions they live in and that copies of the koran were taken from them and mishandled by general kelly says the reason for the prisoners going on strike is because they're angry at the president for not closing the prison like he said he wanted to discuss i'm joined now by. retired colonel morris davis and he's now he was

a former chief prosecutor at one time ok he is also a law professor at howard university welcome colonel great to see you thank you so the general is now asking for a one hundred and seventy million dollars to upgrade a prison that the president vowed to close so is this a sign that guantanamo bay is now closing any time soon but it certainly appears that way it was an interesting general kelly said you know guantanamo was intended to be a temporary facility so the things that were built were intended to last for a few years not for a decade or more and you know were eleven years now so it's another one hundred fifty to one hundred seventy million on top of the hundred twenty million the spent every year just on the recurring cost to keeping the detainees there right so going along with what the general said so i mean it was the intention for this place to shut down but now we're just in so deep that that's just not feasible right i mean when i was involved as cheap prosecutor we designed the expeditionary courtroom

which was a prefab type building because it was intended to be used for a couple years and then disassembled and taken apart and never used again but you know that was back in two thousand and six two thousand and seven and the clock keeps running in the facilities just weren't meant to last for ten or eleven years all right i want to take a look now at some of the things that general kelly pointed out as things he needs money for one of them a new twelve million dollars dining hall for the troops new one hundred excuse me eleven million dollars hospital and medical units for detainees and almost eleven million dollars for a communications network facility to store data and computer records and things like that so. aside from the hospital get mo excuse me general kelly says detainees the conditions they're living in that they are subjected to are just fine is that the case you have been down there in a couple years but i. i believe that's probably correct because their facilities

were built modern modeled after prisons here in the u.s. so they were mainly more permanent type structures which is the general said a lot of these guys were getting older they've been there ten or eleven years and some are beginning to get into that geriatric medical state get more really what equipped to handle so you know it's really interesting to me you've got the fiscal conservatives here that are trying to pass a budget with drastic cuts but here we've got guantanamo where they want to spend one hundred twenty million dollars a year to keep in essence eighty guys that we really want to keep incarcerated plus another hundred fifty million on top of that so you know in a few years that adds up to a considerable amount of money now they're talk about defunding into your i mean the n.p.r. budget you could fund for a couple of decades based on what we're spending in a given they're asking for millions and millions of dollars on something that president obama said was going to close long ago. you talked about the health that they're the health concerns that they're facing there and many of them had been

there for quite a while over a decade and now when there is this hunger strike which surely isn't making their health conditions any better the detainees say that they're going on a hunger strike to protest that some of their personal belongings were mishandled but the general came out and said something different they said that they're actually a great president obama big for not closing the prison like he said that he what is out the real reason i don't appear know they had hope and hope and change in mind as well as an obama took office and i guess they've been just as disillusioned as a lot of us that bought into that slogan as well but you know you've got a majority dominik one ton of eighty six of one hundred sixty six have been cleared for transfer who have been in confinement now for you know more than a decade in some cases so for them the hunger strike you know they're kind of out of sight out of mind and the only way to potentially call attention to it is to do something drastic like a hunger strike so the numbers you know deity of said the numbers come from. seven

to fourteen to twenty one to have leave twenty five is the last official number but if you talk to some of the attorneys that have been down there they say that's a lowball figure that is probably three or four times that right now they are getting some attention what do you think it will take for for this basic to close down well i think it's going to take the american people paying attention and demanding that it be closed i mean if you look at the issue of drones the program with drones went on for a number of years and not much really happened till suddenly people here paid attention to grand paul you know doing a very buster is going to take the american public focusing their attention on guantanamo and unfortunately it takes sometimes people dying for that so i guess maybe it's more awareness of the issue today when it was going to be longer there's a lot of money being wasted it one ton of and a lot of our prestige is going down the tubes as well right which is no good reason to keep it colonel great really great to have you here that was retired colonel morris davis a law professor at howard university

a victory for those against capital punishment maryland state legislature has passed a bill banning the death penalty when it comes to the ultimate punishment you may be surprised to find out what other countries are in the u.s. company artie's margaret howell has more. the death penalty debate in this country is coming to a head again with maryland saying it doesn't want to kill its inmates anymore the same legislator booted to abolish the death penalty and a loss currently on governor melis desk awaiting a signature. would be the eighteenth state to abolish the death penalty take a look at this map all the states in red have the death penalty the ones in white dove who says the united states iran north korea saudi arabia he says we can agree on anything one common link they all still practiced executions here's another map for you all of these countries use the death penalty the world's top executioners in two thousand and eleven were china but more than a thousand kills followed by iran with three sixty saudi arabia with eighty two

iraq with sixty eight the us with forty three yemen forty one and finally north korea with a mere thirty death penalty kills. the offenses that equate death vary remarkably from country to country and well let's face it there are a lot of justifications countries used to kill criminals for instance being a homosexual in the us does not get your head cut off here as it doesn't saudi arabia and apostasy garners execution in iran but you can convert a member you want freely in the us to any religion the biggest reason the united states sends people to death row murder technically treason is still in the books here too but as the death penalty offense goes no matter what those countries who kill killing is still killing as a continuation of the pro who of the brotherly love the united states stepped in and joining forces with their fellow death penalty nations to continue the practice making sure the united nations doesn't even think of establishing a moratorium on executions the international body was considering it back in november of two thousand and twelve incidentally the united states is the only

country from the prominent g eight group of leading global economies to still carry out executions eighty eight percent of us criminal just say that the death penalty is not a proven deterrent for homicide and so abolishing the death penalty will not increase the homicide rates in the us the cost of the death penalty to the us federal government it varies it costs about eight times that of a federal murder case in which the death penalty is not sought. using maryland as a case study the state's been one hundred eighty six million dollars killing five people but one upside to the death penalty it does offer some closure to families of victims of violent crime and some of the states will still have a recourse for those who commit violent crimes the state legislators are deciding if the death penalty is still appropriate or not in washington margaret howell r.t. by now you're probably well aware of the animal rights group peta their ads are kind of hard to forget some so racy they've been banned from television like this

one. i . turns out the people for the ethical treatment of animals might have a spotty record when it comes to animal treatment according to a report released from the virginia department of agriculture and consumer services peta calderon a shocking ninety percent of the pets under its care at a no norfolk virginia shelter that's one thousand six hundred forty seven cats and dogs just last year only nineteen were placed in adoptive homes so you're probably thinking how is this possible as an organization supposed to save animals while we have a spokesperson from peta right now in our l.a. studio to help us understand what's going on love them as well and so. i guess put

those figures up there at how do you defend yourself and peta against these claims of killing animals well peter makes no secret at all that we have to euthanize most of the animals we take in but that's because most of the animals we take in are sick or injured or dying or they're brought to us by people who see that their companion animals are at the end of their lives and they're too poor to be able to afford an expensive trip to the vet for euthanasia they know that if they bring the animal to us we will not turn them away in fact we don't turn away any animal ever we take in all the worst case scenario animals and because we do that we're able to offer a service to the community that unfortunately often involves euthanasia we give those companion animals a quick merciful release from their suffering ok you won't turn them away but as we see the vast majority of them are killed so i mean if they must hannibal's end up

getting killed why bring them to feed us while i mean chances are we know what their fate is going to be. oh peta has many many successful rescue stories as i said the majority of animals who come to us are dying and they face a quicker more merciful death with us than they would in their current condition and people know that and they use peta as a shelter of last resort ok i mean i want to ask you because you know peta really has a very strong advertising campaign and it's known for its provocative advertising do you think that then people see this and at the same time you guys are killing animals so i mean this can you see why this can be viewed as hypocritical. oh well the provocative ads only draw more attention to our website where we're able to talk about the serious issues like the real culprit here which is the animal

overpopulation crisis that's really the enemy that needs to be addressed and all of our efforts are aimed at addressing at the animal overpopulation crisis oh my yes every year six to eight million animals enter u.s. animal shelters and roughly half of them that's over four million animals have to be euthanized because there simply aren't enough good homes for them and i don't want to get arrested over there but we just saw an ad. practically almost naked women tossing around vegetables how does that get the word out about the overpopulation of animals and how to properly address that well actually that was for our vague and campaign getting people to stop eating meat which of course is the greatest killer of animals that's currently going on on the planet and although some people see it as provocative and it is that happened to be one of our most highly viewed videos of all time and that brings people to our website which then allows us to engage them in conversations about why they should go beacon and

what it does for their health and the environment not to mention the animals plus all of the other animal issues that peta is. heavily involved in you know some might ask. that peta has a budget of about thirty six million dollars that maybe some of that money should go away for those celebrity stunts and racy ads and go towards actually saving animals. a huge amount of our budget goes toward the heart and soul of our work which our undercover investigations the provocative ads that you're talking about are successful well in fact you're talking about them and that's proof that they are successful that's what people see so that is one of the main ways that we use. the media and social media to be able to get our message out there but if you go to peta dot org and look at the work that we do for peta saves dot com which which gives a comprehensive overview of all the animals that we have saved in all the areas

where they suffer the worst abuses i think you'll see that. our budget is going to the right causes mr wayland appreciate you coming on the show that was very sweet and a spokesperson for peta thank you for having me. well today is the answer national day or for the elimination of racial discrimination it's a day that gives us a great opportunity to look back on the country's dark history of race relations and how the issue stands today on the surface it looks like we've come a long way after all we have a black first family in the white house but to what extent does racism still exist if you look at the criminal justice system quite a bit race and criminal justice this is what this chart shows three thousand four hundred twenty two black male prisoners per one hundred thousand and when it comes to whites that number is far less for the same amount of people in that population four hundred and eighty seven white males per prisoners per one hundred thousand so

how far have we really come when it comes to race in the united states the discuss i'm joined by boots riley musician activists. either booth so the fact that we do have a black president seems like a pretty compelling evidence that we have come a long way in the country today what do you think well i've never been one to put forth that it's the government that's the oppressive so it's it's actually the system in the ruling class that is responsible for oppression and racism so whether you have a black manager in the mcdonald's or you're working there or a white man or just used to working at mcdonald's and you still asserted so no i don't think that having a black president puts it due to the racism that we experience that figure that you put up there comparing. black and white incarceration. is

a compelling figure but it does not include the other additional information. that shows that arrest rates for whites and blacks are pretty much the same for the same crimes. but the question is what happens once people go to court so black folks are more likely to be completed in jail for the same crimes then quite frankly and the numbers certainly show that there is a problem that race is still still an issue but. would you deny that that we have made strides i mean things like affirmative action action that have been taken to address this issue some even call it i reverse racism in some cases well i want to put it into context that any changes that have come about have only come

as a direct of mass radical movements. so affirmative action came about at a time when there were revolutions going on all over the world when people were shutting down places of business and there was fear of a revolutionary movement growing here in the u.s. . it didn't come through. electing the right person actually nixon was in office when when that came about and it came because of. turmoil on the streets and and in in a movement so there are slight changes obviously even with a form of action most of that is being taken away so as long as you don't have a movement you are not going to have change. aren't you things that have come about you know have come only because of fierce fighting.

when i ask you mr riley do you feel like you're discriminated against on a day to day basis these days. well let's say there's a my existence is a little different than the average person. and definitely than the average person that people recognize me on the street however even that being said. if you want to just talk about. racist oppression i or guns hail to my five police. in in one situation with use documented because it happened there happened to be a writer from the guardian that was there at the time when it happened the only thing that saved me was someone said hey that's boots riley. certainly as african-americans don't have that i don't assist her luxury of privilege i guess i

guess where what can we deal as we have this day or supposed to reflect on this what can we do have how do we address the issue today what we have to understand. that racism is not the result of a feeling or an emotion or even just simply an idea. racist the question is part of have capitalism works you have to split people up and you have to make one group with a scapegoat you have to tell everyone that the reason for their problems is not the ruling class but the reason for their problems is this other group of people and so. being that people of color are the are are economically at the bottom rung of society. there are racist ideas that are put out there to explain to people that it's not the system that it's them. that

it's the people themselves and it's fair problem so there are racist ideas about people of color being savagely being. being stupid or you know just being morally wrong and those stories are put out there in whose media and even television shows in movies only to explain that hate the spoke so just poor because of themselves and it's not a systematic problem so what we have to understand is that the economic situation we're in has to do with the with the capitalist system and it does not have to do with people not understanding. or having moral. having more order to it's because. a system needs to have a certain amount of unemployed people and in

a surrounding you don't need to do have to wrap this up because her running out of time i do appreciate you coming on that was bitterly a musician an activist. now the latest developments in the attack world twitter has revolutionized the way we communicate and now they have a patent for their messaging system they now have the rights for the technology that allows a single user to get the same message in multiple places the computer fraud and abuse act has been used lately to prosecute cyber crimes it was written in the eighty's but some say it doesn't make sense in the technology dependent world we live in today now another man has been convicted and is going to jail is this justice and speaking of cyber crimes prosecuting them the family of the late internet activist and innovator aaron swartz is in a battle with mit but now the university has announced plans to publicly release documents related to swartz's prosecution is out all things tech i'm joined now by john herman editor of buzz feed tech and our producer bob english welcome gentlemen

so i'm going to start with you there by talking twitter starting off with john excuse me today is the site seventh birthday and the social media company has issued a new patent in this patent covers a way to send messages to the same person on several different platforms what is this all about john because is this something really special it seems like we have that technology already. twitter's patent is written like a lot of software patents which is to say it's seems too obvious to be patentable but apple's got tons of patents like this twitter has a few already for example twitter owns the patent to poll to refresh you know when you pull down your message list and it refreshes twitter is unique in the tech world and that it sort of it has set itself against the general movement of aggressively enforcing patents it's a said in the past and in relation to this patent that it will only defensively use

its patents it's hard to imagine someone suing twitter for operating a twitter like service but the patent trolling is a and increasingly serious issue in tech so how to make sense for them to get this better what do you think bob could this have an effect on innovation in social media certainly because it is a form of monopoly privilege and even if it's only temporary for a certain number of years so twitter is saying that they're going to use this as a defensive measure only what does it mean i mean would they go on the offensive with that. i'm tempted to think that if a competitor sprung up with a similar business model that they wouldn't hesitate to use it if they got big enough i think that's what happens in these dells and we're going to talk about it later the computer fraud and abuse act some people say that that is too vague and not specific and worry that this broad language could lead to over prosecution in certain instances and actually that's exactly why some say happened to andrew

arnheim our twenty seven year old twenty seven year old computer hacker known on the internet as we've he was just sentenced to forty one months in prison for discovering a security flaw. website john is this fair or is this site the sign of another law that is out of date and needs to be updated. i think this story is getting lost a little bit we've because of his reputation as a hacker and sort of a bit of a troll. is is like not the most sympathetic figure in a situation like this but what he did with a team to you is actually in many ways a service to the company and to customers he exposed a security flaw and he reported it maybe not in the most responsible way he went to the press and he shared. some details of the exploit with with other hackers but there was there are really clear signs of malice in what he did and i think that's all that's getting lost because of his his personality and his reputation i

think the laws under which he's being prosecuted are overly broad and they're being interpreted in extremely broad way and there's a direct line you can draw but tween what's going on with weave and what happened to aaron swartz and they are in some cases companies pay for somebody to point out these security flaws right right had he been on had he been on payroll he could have been making six figures doing the same thing i want to turn the conversation now to aaron swartz as you mentioned john there is a link there and swartz faced decades in prison he allegedly broke into the mit computer to make academic journals public and after after he took his own life many say prosecutors went way too far and pursuing have now mit is making documents public what does this mean for the case. first they're not making everything entirely public in the rejecting certain names and there is a bit of a fight going on the judge in the case actually has discretion whether or not to

release this so it's not a completely transparent process so far so is it fair we don't know that's up to the judge right now. i think just thirty seconds left what do you think this means for the case john. i think it more than consequences for the case this will have consequences for mit in a from a p.r. standpoint i think they're doing this to distance themselves from what has been you know a tragic and very public spectacle they have repeatedly tried to sort of disown what happened and i think there's there they may be using this as a way to sort of further distance themselves from from what happened to aaron i guess we're going to have to wait and see gentlemen thank you both for weighing in on this tech talk today on this thursday that was john hermann editor of buzz feed tack an hour to producer bob english and that is going to do it for now but for more on the stories we cover check out our you tube channel you tube dot com slash r t america our web site r t dot com slash usa and follow me on twitter alison all

the very back here in a half hour. admission and free accreditation free transport charges free. range mincer free. free spirit child free. download free blogs just plug in video for your media projects and free media oh god r.t. dot com you can. play. the piece he.

believes to be. something. that's.